After Day of Quiet, More ‘Occupy’ Protests Planned

A protester's banner was quickly taken down in Zuccotti Park on Wednesday. More demonstrations were planned for Thursday.Credit
Michael Appleton for The New York Times

Along the western edge of Zuccotti Park, for nearly two months the plaza’s nexus of zealous drummers and curious passers-by in Lower Manhattan, a lone man sitting on a marble ledge scribbled in his journal on Wednesday morning.

Two police officers stood on the sidewalk a few feet away, trading stories to pass the time. “Nothing’s happening,” one griped to the other.

And across the street, a crossing guard ushered a disarmingly manageable group of a half-dozen pedestrians across Trinity Place in a light rain. “Back to normal,” he said, smiling.

For the first time since September, the blocks that surround the epicenter of the Occupy Wall Street protests seemed to return to equilibrium, more than 24 hours after protesters were evicted from the park.

On Thursday, some of the bustle may return, a short walk away, as protesters plan to converge on the New York Stock Exchange at 7 a.m., two months from the day the occupation began.

At 3 p.m., according to a Web site for the group, demonstrators will gather at 16 transit hubs across the city — including Union Square in Manhattan, Fordham Road in the Bronx and Broadway Junction in Brooklyn — and protest in the company of train travelers.

City officials say they expect tens of thousands of protesters to turn out on Thursday and plan to add security. Officials estimated that the cost of the increased police presence at Zuccotti Park was $3 million a month.

For many of the park’s neighbors, the eviction was long awaited. “It was nice to have my neighborhood back,” said Karen Greenspan, 52, who lives less than a block from the park, on Liberty Street. “I could actually see the ground.”

Linda Gerstman, 40, who lives near the stock exchange — “the barricaded world,” she called her neighborhood — said she was grateful for the city’s action because she had grown concerned about health conditions in the area. “We’re touching the same doorknobs,” she said.

Local business owners, some of whom attended a rally against the occupation at City Hall on Monday, said customers could finally eat lunch in the park again. Jack DeFillippo, 48, a construction worker one block from the park on Broadway, said his team might soon be able to get deliveries at the old location, if the sidewalk becomes more accessible.

Julie Menin, chairwoman of the Lower Manhattan community board, said businesses and residents had been contacting her since the eviction with a simple question: When would the barricades, installed on neighborhood blocks shortly after the protests began, be removed?

Marc LaVorgna, a spokesman for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, said that some barricades had been removed about two weeks ago after consultations with business owners, but that many were reinstalled as rumors of further marches and protests emerged.

Inside the park, a few dozen demonstrators stayed through midmorning on Wednesday; the police would not allow sleeping gear past either of the two entrances.

Protest signs reflected recent events. “This is SO not over,” one read. In a corner of the park where protesters had set up a library — thousands of books were removed by the police on Tuesday, according to protesters — a modest new collection had been started, with a few small stacks and a single red rose placed atop them.

“Everything we had here, everything we worked for is gone,” said Hristo Voynov, 18, who blamed the rain, protesters’ fatigue and the spate of arrests on Tuesday for the low turnout on Wednesday.

Despite complications wrought by protesters over the past two months, some neighbors were ambivalent about seeing the occupation fade, if only for the day. “I’m part of it,” Mr. DeFillippo said. “Nobody likes millionaires.”

Mark Scherzer, 60, a lawyer who lives one block from the park, on Cedar Street, likened the plaza to “a forlorn shadow of itself.”

“It’s like a vibrant spot has been deadened,” he added.

Aaron James, 48, who used to live in the financial district, returned to the neighborhood this week for the first time since moving to Memphis in 2008. Mr. James, the man who was writing in his journal early Wednesday inside the park, recorded observations from the site of the occupation he had cheered on remotely for the past two months. Nothing about the neighborhood seemed to have changed since he left, he said.

“The buildings were barely under way,” he noted, pointing to the World Trade Center construction site. “I guess that’s a difference.”

Inside his notebook, Mr. James logged his account of the morning: “The average New Yorker goes about his business.”

Cara Buckley contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on November 17, 2011, on page A29 of the New York edition with the headline: Where Protesters Camped, a Placid Scene, for Now. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe